Hello again, Yard Work readers! Hope you’re having a great and prank-free April Fool’s Day. Now that Opening Day has finally arrived for the third time this season, it’s time for DUCK SNORTS to look at the previous day’s action and see what stories are developing across the Major League Baseball landscape. Let’s get it going!
ANOTHER STEROID ABUSER GETS HIS JUST DESSERTS: Former Baltimore Oriole slugger Jay Gibbons finally got what was coming to him, just like hundreds of steroid users before him. Gibbons, who was named in the damning Mitchell Report earlier this year, was finally released by the Baltimore Orioles just before the season began. It’s a strong statement from the Orioles organization, a team that can use all the hitting help it can get. While Gibbons gave Baltimore three 20-homer seasons, his wanton use of illegal performance enhancing substances lead to three injury-plagued seasons, which surely offset whatever good the drugs did. In addition, his performance while drugged influenced the Orioles in signing him to a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract that they’re still paying for — even released, Gibbons will earn another $11 million over the next two years. Just another example of how these drugs have tricked yet another unknowing franchise into throwing away their money. If the players had any scruples at all, all current contracts would be made null and void, and each player would be signed only to a one-year deal, with next year’s salary based solely on what the player accomplished the previous year. This is how contracts used to be handled once upon a time, back when the sport was clean. Given the embarrassment that owners have had to suffer these past few years, I think it’s only fair. Which leads me to my next item…
BASEBALL, LIKE LIFE, IS SOMETIMES NOT FAIR: I received an e-mail this morning asking me about why the Brewers and Cubs opened their season playing in cold and dreary Wrigley Field, instead of in the domed climate-controlled weather-free confines of Miller Park out in Milwaukee. The same question could be asked about why the Red Sox and A’s had to start their season out in Japan a week before everyone else, only to end up playing more exhibition games before restarting regular season play. Atlanta fans and Nationals fans might be wondering why they only played once, on Sunday, and then had to fly somewhere else to play the very next day. Some people might look at this year’s interleague schedule and wonder why their divisional rival is playing a bunch of cupcakes while their favorite team has to toil against the cream of the crop. The best way to explain this is by saying, “it is what it is.” Sometimes the baseball schedule is favorable, and sometimes it isn’t. There’s no bias or shady goings-on in making the schedule. It’s an impartial process that will never please everyone, and shouldn’t try to. What separates the good teams from the bad is how they handle this adversity, and whether these struggles make them a better or worse team. Baseball, like life, can be unfair, but something good can still happen because of it.
JOE MORGAN COULD HAVE BEEN THE GM OF THE TEXAS RANGERS: In case you missed it during Sunday night’s tilt between the Braves and Nationals, the President of the United States, George W. Bush, visited the ESPN broadcasters’ booth, and dropped a bombshell. He suggested that Emmy-award winning analyst and Hall of Famer Joe Morgan could have been the General Manager of the Texas Rangers, a team formerly owned by the President. As you might know, the Rangers have been a second-class organization, with only a brief run of success during the early 1990s to their credit, ironically during President Bush’s ownership. But with a world class mind like Joe Morgan’s in the front office, who knows what could have happened? It’s safe to say that the biggest mistake of Bush’s reign — trading away slugger Sammy Sosa for pennies on the dollar — might not have happened. If he was around the last few years, I’m pretty sure that Alfonso Soriano would still be a Ranger as well. While we can’t know for sure what would have happened had Morgan been GM and Sosa and Soriano stayed with Texas, it’s something worth thinking about.
WHY DOES BASEBALL HATE THE YANKEES SO MUCH?: This is the question I found myself asking while waiting, in vain, for the long-awaited Opening Day tilt between the Yankees and their long-time divisional rivals, the Toronto Blue Jays, to finally start. Unfortunately, baseball didn’t account for the weather when planning for this historic game, which was eventually postponed due to inclement playing conditions. This means that thousands of fans that traveled from all across the United States — if not the entire world — expecting to see the final season opener in The House That Ruth Built left the Stadium wet and unhappy. It just shows how much contempt Major League Baseball has for the Yankees, scheduling the game during a time of the year and place in the US when and where the chance of cancellation is high.
If MLB truly cared as much about the Yankees as we’re lead to believe, they woud have done everything in their power to make sure this game went off without a hitch. But by showing their contempt for the Yankees and postponing the game, they inadvertently hurt themselves and other as well. ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports, was left in a lurch as they scrambled to fill the slot reserved for this long-awaited game. The same goes for folks tuning in to their local broadcasts. Many viewers were forced to either watch the Tigers / Royals tilt (a much less interesting match-up), or they simply turned the channel. As Joe DiMaggio once said, you never know who’s watching you for the first time. If yesterday’s historic tilt was the first time for a potential fan, then it’s likely that baseball lost a fan forever. If this sort of childish disrespect for one of the league’s class acts continues, they might lose this fan as well.
THIS JUST IN — BULLPEN PITCHERS SOMETIMES PITCH POORLY: If there was a theme from yesterday’s wall-to-wall action, it was the volatile nature of the bullpen pitcher. All over the league, starters gave way to bullpens that just couldn’t hold the lead. The Tigers blew a sure-fire win for staff ace Justin Verlander, letting the lowly Kansas City Royals claw back and win in extra innings. Replacement Phillies closer Tom Gordon allowed five runs in just one-third of an inning against the Nationals; if he keeps that up, he’ll have one of the worst seasons ever for a pitcher. Cubs closer Kerry Wood allowed the Brewers to build a 3-0 lead that Brewers closer Eric Gagne gave right back. Then Bob Howry allowed Milwaukee to plate an extra-inning run that proved to be the winning run. The Cleveland Indians let the White Sox erase a 5-run deficit, but the Chicago bullpen returned the favor. And in the day’s most egregious display of bullpen ineptitude, Atlanta scored 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th to tie the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates, only to allow the Pirates to score 3 runs in the 12th inning. Atlanta came back with 2 of their own, but it was too little too late.
What does this all mean? Some people might be racking their brains trying to find a pattern in all of this, but it seems clear to me that there’s no such pattern to find. Last night’s bullpen implosion is just coincidence. It only means that bullpen pitchers, just like starting pitchers, or power hitters, or anyone else, can have bad days, too. I wouldn’t read too much in all of this. After all, for a lot of these teams, it’s the first game of the season. There’s still plenty of games left before it’s all said and done. Real teams don’t have the luxury that fantasy owners have — they can’t just drop or sign pitchers at a moment’s notice. To overreact and suggest that these teams have issues with their bullpens makes no sense at all, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone go ahead and do that. In case you forgot, they play the games for a reason. Let’s see what happens in the second game before we do anything extreme.
David Smithson Michaels wants to make sure that folks do not confuse his column with the San Diego Padres weblog that is also called DUCK SNORTS, and hope that people stop sending rude e-mails to that blogger on his behalf.